From demonstrating compliance and ensuring safety to maintaining assets and increasing productivity, food manufacturing maintenance managers have their work cut out for them. Thankfully, computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) can streamline processes and improve maintenance operations for the food manufacturing industry. Read on to learn how food manufacturing CMMS software can significantly benefit your organization.
1. Comply with Food Safety Regulations
There are a number of entities that regulate the food manufacturing industry—United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the ISO 22000 family of International Standards just to name a few. To ensure food manufacturers are meeting health and safety regulations, these entities conduct inspections and audits. CMMS software provides a means to store detailed documentation such as safety manuals, standard operating procedures and important records related to equipment and assets. A few clicks (or taps, if you’re using a mobile device) is all it takes to retrieve pertinent data needed to demonstrate compliance. You can even generate custom reports for inspectors and auditors using food manufacturing CMMS software.
2. Maximize Equipment Reliability
Food manufacturers require reliable equipment to succeed. Any interruption in food processing can seriously affect production and, more importantly, profits. Regular preventive maintenance is necessary in order to maximize equipment reliability. Food manufacturing CMMS software allows users to effectively plan, schedule and record preventive maintenance activities on each piece of equipment. Maintenance software helps maximize uptime and keep equipment operating in peak condition.
3. Reduce Food Waste
Aside from affecting production, interruptions in the food manufacturing process can cause significant waste. Food that can’t be processed in a timely manner due to an equipment malfunction or failure must be scrapped due to health and safety concerns. CMMS software decreases the likelihood of equipment breakdowns by ensuring preventive maintenance is performed on a regular basis. This helps maintenance teams operate more efficiently and reduce waste. Access to real-time information also allows staff to also track inventory levels more effectively, which helps prevent over-ordering.
4. Make Smarter Asset Management Decisions
Access to a comprehensive history on each asset, including dates when failures occurred and repairs were performed, helps management make smarter asset management decisions. For example, each asset has an average lifecycle and budgets typically allocate funds toward replacement when that asset has reached its end of life. However, with regular preventive maintenance performed and very few unplanned repairs, that asset may well exceed its average lifecycle. Management may opt to delay equipment replacement and instead allocate those available funds toward other pressing matters.
5. Modernize Your Maintenance Operations
If you are still utilizing spreadsheets to organize your maintenance operations, it’s time for a change. Whereas spreadsheets are limited in capabilities, CMMS software provides automation of tasks, centralization of data, detailed analysis, advanced reporting and more. Most reputable maintenance software solutions offer the ability to access the program on any web-based device, including mobile. Maintenance staff can manage work orders, work requests, and parts inventory on the go with ease. Dashboard features within CMMS software enable companies to view real-time data on a number of key performance indicators (KPIs) graphically at any time. This allows management to keep a finger on the pulse of their organization, spot trends and improve efficiency.
Ready to Try Food Manufacturing CMMS Software?
iMaint is an industry-leading CMMS/EAM (enterprise asset management) solution that’s helped a number of food manufacturers maximize their ROI and enhance productivity. It’s suitable for small to large multi-site organizations, and it’s easy to expand from one location to others. iMaint provides a simple interface that maintenance personnel feel comfortable using and can be customized at both the company and user levels. Companies can rename fields and labels system-wide to match their needs and set up different levels of users, ensuring users only see modules relevant to their jobs. Additionally, each individual user can customize their view and save their preferred settings. Mobile access, dashboard feature and a variety of cloud-based options for iMaint are also available. Schedule a free demo to learn more about our CMMS software for food manufacturing.
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